October 5, 2023

Anger at Univ of Penn for claiming 2023 Nobel prize winner as their own: they demoted her

https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2023/10/03/researcher-demoted-by-university-of-pennsylvania-wins-nobel-prize-for-mrna-discoveries-and-some-academics-urge-penn-to-apologize/

Researcher Demoted By University Of Pennsylvania Wins Nobel Prize For mRNA Discoveries—And Some Academics Urge Penn To Apologize

Katalin Karikó won this year’s Nobel Prize in Medicine alongside Drew Weissman for their research that led to the development of mRNA Covid-19 vaccines, but a post from the University of Pennsylvania—where Karikó was demoted from tenure track in 1995—claiming her as a Penn researcher angered the medical community.

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Karikó was hired by the University of Pennsylvania in 1989 as an adjunct professor and researcher, where she met and began collaborating with Weissman, a professor of medicine at Penn, in 1997.
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Though initially on track to become a tenured professor, the university reportedly offered Karikó a choice to either leave or be demoted with a pay cut in 1995—which she said was “particularly horrible” because she had just been diagnosed with cancer and her husband was stuck in Hungary because of a visa issue—because her mRNA research was deemed too risky and did not attract enough grant funding.



Karikó took the demotion and continued her work, but later left her senior research investigator position at Penn (where she retains an adjunct professorship) in 2013 to serve as vice president at BioNTech—co-manufacturer of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine—because Penn refused to reinstate her to a tenure track position, reportedly considering her research “not of faculty quality.”

Penn congratulated Karikó and Weissman for their Nobel Prize win on Monday in an X post, calling them “Penn’s historic mRNA vaccine research team” and attaching a university news release (which does not acknowledge Karikó’s tense history with Penn)—but a community note applied to the post calls the wording “misleading” because she left the university as a researcher a decade ago.

October 5, 2023

'The tenant from hell': She refused to pay for her luxury Airbnb for 540 days. Wants 100k to vacate

Sascha Jovanovic should be living the good life in his private estate perched in the hills of Brentwood, enjoying the spoils of a successful career in periodontics.

But instead, he says he’s scared to walk to his car because there’s a woman who won’t leave his guesthouse. She says she has the right to stay. So far a judge has ruled that, under the city’s rent stabilization ordinance, he has no legal reason to evict her.

When Elizabeth Hirschhorn’s Airbnb stay ended in April 2022, she simply didn’t move out. She’s been living there rent-free ever since, and she refused to budge unless Jovanovic paid her a relocation fee of $100,000, according to a settlement offer reviewed by The Times.

Jovanovic said his hillside haven has become a hell.

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Hirschhorn declined to speak directly to The Times to give her side of the story. But her attorney, Colin Walshok, said she was not required to pay rent because the city had never approved the unit for occupancy and that its shower was constructed without a permit.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-10-04/airbnb-guest-refuse-pay-leave-luxury-rental

October 4, 2023

Without a College Degree, Life in America Is Staggeringly Shorter (8.5 years shorter)

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/03/opinion/life-expectancy-college-degree.html



What the economic statistics obscure in the averages is that there is not one but two Americas — and a clear line demarcating the division is educational attainment. Americans with four-year college degrees are flourishing economically, while those without are struggling.

Worse still, as we discovered in new research, the America of those without college degrees has been scarred by death and staggeringly shorter life spans.

Almost two-thirds of American adults do not have college degrees, and they have become increasingly excluded from good jobs, political power and social esteem. As their lives and livelihoods are threatened, their longevity declines.

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Life expectancy at age 25 (adult life expectancy) for those with four-year college degrees rose to 59 years on the eve of the pandemic — so an average individual would live to 84 — up from 54 years (or 79 years old) in 1992. During the pandemic, by 2021, the expectation slipped a year.

But we were staggered to discover that for those without college degrees, life expectancy reached its peak around 2010 and has been falling since, an unfolding disaster that has attracted little attention in the media or among elected officials.

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Adult life expectancy for this group started out two and a half years lower, at 51.6, in 1992 — so an average individual would live to nearly 77 years old. But by 2021, it was 49.8 years (or almost 75 years old), roughly eight and a half years less than people with college degrees, and those without had lost 3.3 years during the pandemic.

October 4, 2023

What did you do with your pet's ashes?

Cat passed two weeks ago. Picked up the ashes today.

October 4, 2023

Attorneys for college taken over by DeSantis allies threaten to sue 'alternate' school

Attorneys for New College of Florida, the traditionally progressive public liberal arts college that was taken over by allies of Gov. Ron DeSantis as part of his “war on woke,” last week threatened to sue a group of former faculty members and students who have formed an alternative online institute named “Alt New College” after departing the school following the takeover.

Alt New College says on its website that it was created to teach free and subsidized courses and to preserve the original educational philosophy of the school following the “hostile takeover” of New College of Florida earlier this year.

“Over time, we hope to build an online institute that helps protect other communities facing similar attacks,” the Alt New College website said. “What is happening at New College of Florida is part of a national strategy to overtake public education and subvert a fundamental pillar of democracy.”

But attorneys for Sarasota, Florida-based New College said in a letter last Thursday that the online institute may be violating the school’s trademark and is likely to cause confusion. The attorneys demanded that Alt New College stop using the “New College” name.


https://apnews.com/article/new-college-florida-desantis-education-5524a9aec8c2022dc3dae015815e1044

October 3, 2023

Gaetz's Ouster of McCarthy Draws Attention to His Ethics Issues

Gaetz’s Ouster of McCarthy Draws Attention to His Ethics Issues
Representative Matt Gaetz is facing a House Committee inquiry into allegations of sexual misconduct and misuse of funds. Representative Kevin McCarthy has argued Mr. Gaetz’s move against his speakership is payback.

Representative Matt Gaetz’s successful push to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy has cemented his status as one of the most reviled members of the House of Representatives — including among many of his fellow Republicans — and drawn attention to a long-running investigation by the House Ethics Committee into Mr. Gaetz’s conduct.

Mr. McCarthy has argued that Mr. Gaetz’s motion to remove him as speaker is little more than personal payback for Mr. McCarthy’s failure to interfere with the inquiry, which is looking into allegations of sexual misconduct and misuse of funds by Mr. Gaetz.

Mr. Gaetz, a Florida Republican, has asserted that the more than two-year, wide-ranging inquiry into his conduct is the work of the Mr. McCarthy and his allies, who he argues are bent on smearing him.

“I am the most investigated man in the United States Congress,” Mr. Gaetz said Monday night of the ethics inquiry, adding: “It seems that the Ethics Committee’s interest in me waxes and wanes based on my relationship with the speaker.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/03/us/politics/gaetz-ethics-committee-house.html

October 3, 2023

Houston domestic violence: three women killed by their husbands

October 2, 2023

Desperate Desantis promising to deport millions

With Unrealistic Immigration Proposals, DeSantis and Trump Try to Outdo Each Other

In dueling speeches in California, the two Republican candidates pushed for mass deportations, a position that is as extreme as it may be unfeasible.

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Now, Mr. DeSantis, who often tries to stoke outrage with his border policies, has unveiled another extreme position: deporting all undocumented immigrants who crossed the border during the Biden administration.

“Everyone that has come illegally under Biden” should be sent back, Mr. DeSantis said on Friday in response to a reporter’s question at a campaign event in Long Beach, Calif. “That’s probably six or seven million people right there. It’s going to require a lot of effort. It’s going to require us to lean in.”


Though Mr. DeSantis greatly overestimated the number of people who have entered the country illegally since Mr. Biden took office, such mass deportations would require enormous investments in the nation’s immigration enforcement system and could do severe economic harm to key American industries.

Conducting so many deportations would require Mr. DeSantis to hire more Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, authorize widespread raids into immigrant communities, significantly expand immigration detention space to meet national standards and substantially grow the fleet of airplanes used for deportations. Billions more dollars would need to be spent on bolstering immigration courts to adjudicate cases within months instead of years. Currently, some migrants who have recently arrived in the United States have been given court dates a decade from now because the immigration court backlog is so large.

Still, Mr. DeSantis is not alone in his promises to upend the nation’s immigration system.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/01/us/politics/immigration-desantis-trump.html

October 2, 2023

They trusted the Beverly Hills watch dealer. Then their luxury timepieces vanished

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-10-02/timepiece-gentlemen-anthony-farrer-luxury-watch-rolex

Anthony Farrer was running out of time.

He had built his luxury watch empire on a simple consignment model. Customers would bring his company, the Timepiece Gentleman, their watches. Farrer would sell them, online or from his Beverly Hills showroom, take a commission and give his clients the rest, which might total in the tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. Poll

The watches were flashy — diamond-studded Patek Philippes and Audemars Piguet pieces best kept in a safe — and so was Farrer, a Mercedes-driving semi-celebrity who rose in half a decade from a nobody with a criminal history to the top of the watch-dealing game by plastering himself and his exorbitantly upscale lifestyle all over social media.

But now his clients were getting restless. Several had noticed their watches had mysteriously disappeared from his company’s website. Yet they had not been notified of a sale, they told The Times.

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Farrer responded the only way he knew how, by posting a video online.

“The stuff I did was wrong. Spending people’s money, living above my means. … I’ve been digging myself this hole and it’s a five-million dollar hole,” he said in the Aug. 2 video. “About three million of that debt is to two big clients of mine. One who acted as an investor and I used his money to fund my lifestyle.”

Sitting in a tank top in a spare kitchen in front of dishes in the sink and an empty paper towel roll on the counter, Farrer monologued for nearly 15 minutes.

“This is a rock bottom for me. Feeling like this is worse than sitting in a prison cell, which is where I may end up. I don’t know.”

October 2, 2023

Clarence Thomas and the Mystery of the Missing Book Royalties

https://www.thedailybeast.com/clarence-thomas-and-the-mystery-of-the-missing-book-royalties

Clarence Thomas and the Mystery of the Missing Book Royalties

When Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas released a 2021 Kindle and Audiobook version of his bestselling 2007 memoir, a powerful longtime friend pitched in to juice the sales.

But even with that boost—which The Daily Beast reported came from conservative dark money mastermind Leonard Leo—the sales apparently didn’t take. At least, that’s according to Thomas’ 2021 financial disclosure, which listed no royalty income.

His most recent disclosure, which Thomas filed with an extension in August and covers the 2022 calendar year, doesn’t list royalties, either. In fact, Thomas hasn’t reported any royalty income since 2008, the year after the release of My Grandfather’s Son, a No. 1 New York Times bestseller that earned the justice what at the time was a stunning $1.5 million advance.

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“Leo was facilitating all of these events, and Thomas’s participation in them, and some of them apparently involve the promotion of the book,” Canter said. “If he’s tapping into that network of dark money groups to purchase the books and they’re the same dark money groups presenting arguments to the court, it looks like Thomas is beholden to Leo and those supporters and the grounds for recusal in those cases are strengthened.”

But it’s possible that Thomas’ reporting in this regard has been accurate. In fact, it’s the most likely explanation: The book has not sold enough copies to generate royalty income in excess of his $1.5 million advance—also known as “earning out.”